"Jealous!" Canolles was saying; "jealous! Ah! now I understand it all. Yes, yes, she would make sure that I love her enough to sacrifice all other love! This is a test!" Meanwhile Madame de Cambes communed thus with herself:-- "I am simply a passing fancy for Monsieur de Canolles. He met me on the road just when he was obliged to leave Guyenne, and followed me as the traveller follows a jack-o'-lantern; but his heart is in that little house among the trees, whither he was going the evening that I met him. It is impossible for me to keep by my side a man who loves another, and whom I might perchance be weak enough to love myself, if I were to be longer in his company. Oh! not only should I betray my honor, but the interests of Madame la Princesse, were I to sink so low as to love the agent of her persecutors." As if replying to her own thoughts she cried abruptly:-- "No, no, you must go, monsieur: go, or I go!" "You forget, madame, that I have your promise not to leave the château without informing me of your purpose." "Very well, monsieur, I now inform you that I propose to leave Chantilly instantly." "And do you imagine that I will allow it?" "What!" cried the viscountess; "you will detain me by force?" "Madame, I know not what I may do, but I do know that it is impossible for me to part from you." "Then I am your prisoner?" "You are a woman whom I have already lost twice, and whom I do not propose to lose a third time." "Aha! violence?" "Yes, madame, violence," replied Canolles, "if there is no other way to keep you." "Oh! what extreme felicity," cried Madame de Cambes, "to detain by force a woman who shrieks, who demands her freedom, who does not love you, who detests you!" Canolles started back, and made a rapid mental effort to distinguish between the words and the thought that prompted them. He realized that the moment had come to stake his all upon a single cast.